Wilkerson gets 100th win in St. Al sweep|Prep baseball

Published 12:00 am Thursday, February 26, 2009

Josh Eargle’s first win helped Clint Wilkerson get his 100th.

Eargle, a freshman, threw three innings of one-hit, shutout ball in his first high school start Wednesday night, leading St. Aloysius to a 12-0 win over Sebastopol in the second game of a doubleheader at Bazinsky Field.

St. Al won the first game, 11-1. The two victories were Nos. 99 and 100 for coach Clint Wilkerson, who is in his fifth season with the Flashes.

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“It just means we’ve had a lot of good kids and I’ve been able to coach a lot of hard-working young men that bought in,” Wilkerson said. “It’s a blessing I’ve been able to coach a lot of guys that want to win. I think of all the time we’ve put in, and that means more to me than the number of wins.”

St. Al (5-0, 2-0 Division 7-1A) continued its hot hitting early in the season. Ryno Martin-Nez homered and doubled in game one, then had a pair of RBI doubles in game two, and Pierson Waring went 2-for-3 with a double and two RBIs in game one. After collecting 13 hits in the opener, the Flashes jumped on Sebastopol (2-5, 0-3) for nine runs in the top of the first in the second game.

St. Al has scored in double figures in every game so far, and has outscored its opponents 61-8.

“We’ve really been on the last two nights. We’ve been hitting the ball hard,” Martin-Nez said. St. Al beat Madison-St. Joe 13-0 on Tuesday. “That’s a great feeling when, as a team, you feel like everybody can get it done.”

In addition to another strong hitting performance Wednesday, the Flashes also got a pair of lockdown pitching efforts. Eargle struck out six and walked one in his three-inning stint.

In game one, Joseph Brown allowed one run and two hits in six innings. After getting touched for a run in the top of the first, Brown retired 15 of the last 18 batters he faced. He finished with seven strikeouts, and helped his own cause by going 2-for-3 with an RBI at the plate.

“Those two guys are going to be the back end of the rotation, and we feel we can toe it up with anybody with those guys on the mound,” Wilkerson said of Eargle and Brown.

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Contact Ernest Bowker at ebowker@vicksburgpost.com.